That night Grandma and I turned the house upside down. Grandma must have tossed forty years of junk, knick-knacks, and all of the other useless things a person collects over a lifetime. In their place she stocked the cupboards with supplies. I must have made 10 trips to the dumpster at the end of Fox Hollow Road. No matter how many times or ways I asked why she had all that stuff or why she was throwing everything away or why she had called me or what was wrong, all Grandma would say is “you’ll see.” Thinking of all the possible answers she could have given, that one seemed the worst.
I woke near noon the next day to the sound of men hammering on the roof. Grandma was in the kitchen storing a massive tray of beef jerky.
“That looks like a whole cow,” I said with a yawn as I sat down at the table.
“Two,” she answered absently as she stopped her work to pour me a cup of coffee.
“Why two?” I asked as I stirred in the cream.
“The spirits said two, so I made two,” she replied.
I stopped and looked at her. “Grandma?”
“Tu-tu-tu-tu,” she jabbed at me with a wave of the hand. “I made you piroshky,” she said, pulling the warm pastry from the oven. All other thoughts left my mind. “I love you, Grandma,” I said with a laugh.
She chuckled. “My darling.”
After I ate, Grandma put me to work. We boarded up the barn windows, secured loose hinges, stored food, and sharpened axes. We were adjusting the last items in the kitchen when Grandma asked: “Where is the flour?”
I pretended not to hear.
“Layla?”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Oh, my Layla, that boy, he is so stupid. He had a beautiful Russian girl like you, and he married that stupid fat girl with a face like a donkey. And for what? She did not even carry that baby to term. You see, she just got that baby to steal that boy from you, and now he is stuck with her. He is too stupid, Layla. And thanks to him, now you have that ugly tattoo on your arm and shoulder. What about some nice rich man? Didn’t you find a nice man at the Smithsonian? So many nice looking men in suits in Washington, so many soldiers . . .”
She continued, but I’d tuned her out. She was right. Ian was stupid. After one fight, Ian had slept with someone else. His dumb, rash decision resulted in the conception of an innocent child who, sadly, had not lived. Ian had done right by Kristie and married her; but he had not done right by me.
“ . . . and anyway, it no matter. Come tomorrow, no one will care anymore anyway. You see, all things happen for a reason. Now, we are done here. I will go pay the men for the roof, then I will show you the guns, then we’ll drink tea.”
“Guns?”
“Ehh, peel some potatoes,” she said and then wandered outside, still muttering.
Chapter 3
“This is a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. Most policemen use this gun. Comes with 17 rounds. You pop in the cartridge like this and . . .” Grandma squeezed the trigger, blasting a decorative plate with a picture of fruit on it. It used to hang in the dining room. Ignoring my astonished impression, she handed the gun to me. “Didn’t you go hunting with the Campbells?”
“Yes. I can shoot a gun, Grandma,” I said bewildered. Why in the hell did my grandmother have a semi-automatic pistol? We were standing behind the barn. She had guns laid out on the lid of an old feed barrel. I set the gun down.
“Good, good, then you’ll have no problem. Now, this is .44 Magnum, like the Dirty Harry movie. It has good stopping power. Lift up the safety and boom,” Grandma said pulling the trigger. The gun barrel let out a resounding noise, shattering Grandma’s old mantle-piece vase. “The man told Grandma this is a kill-shot gun, very powerful,” she said and set the gun down.
I picked it up, took aim at an old porcelain figurine, and fired. The smiling cherub exploded into a puff of dust.
“Very good! Ahh, here we are,” she said picking up what looked like a machine gun. “This is Colt 9mm sub-machine gun. Grandma had a hard time getting this one, but a nice man on the phone, of course he was Russian, helped Grandma get this one ordered for you. This gun can shoot almost 1000 rounds per minute. Very fast, no?” Grandma said and launched a spray of bullets toward the remaining china pieces she had set up on the fence-post. “Here, you try. Watch for kick back,” she said and handed the gun to me.
I set the gun down and took Grandma by the hands. “Grandma, what in the hell is going on? You’re scaring me.”
“Shoot first,” she said, picking the Colt back up and handing it to me.
I sighed. The gun, surprisingly, didn’t feel heavy in my hands. I held it as I had observed Grandma doing, and as every drug smuggler on T.V. had done, and let off an easy rattle of ammo.
“You see, very easy.”
I set the gun back down. “That is enough, Grandma. Please. What is happening?”
Grandma inhaled deeply and took me by the chin. She looked into my eyes and then kissed me on both cheeks. “First, we’ll put guns away,” she said, picking up the weapons. “Oh, I also bought grenades. Just like on T.V.: pull the pin, throw, it explodes.”
“Grenades?”
After we had restocked Grandma’s personal arsenal, we went back inside.
“Sit down in living room. Watch T.V. I’ll make tea,” she said and wandered into the kitchen.
“But Grandma—“